An engineer fighting Texas’s ban on Israel boycotts
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Lawsuit text:
https://www.cair.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Memorandum.p...
Where would the Civil Rights movement have been without boycotts?
I was once asked in an interview whether "The State of Israel had a right to exist". I replied that no state has a "right to exist" but that individuals have a right to self-determination. A human right that various international laws and conventions give both Israelis and Palestinians. Needless to say, I did not get that job.
BTW, there was a good documentary about this recently in DOC NYC: https://www.docnyc.net/film/boycott/
On what basis? Would a boycott of a protected class of persons be permissible?
But these laws would seem unconstitutional on the basis of the first amendment and precedent: (e.g. In NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co. (1982).)
And the boycott movement is not about targeting individuals or classes of individuals. BDS encourages supporters to select targets based on their complicity in Israel's human rights violations, potential for cross-movement solidarity, media appeal, and likelihood of success.
In 1966 African Americans in Clairborne County, Mississippi, participated in a sustained boycott of white-owned businesses to put pressure on local government and business leaders to meet their 19 “Demands for Racial Justice.” The document, drafted by the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), laid out specific measures to advance the civil rights of African Americans, from desegregation of bus stations to asking that blacks be addressed as “Mr.” and “Mrs.” rather than derogatory terms such as “boy.”
Three years later, a group of white business owners sued the NAACP and its leaders, who had organized and enforced the boycott, for the economic damages they had suffered.
The Supreme Court ruled that the NAACP’s boycott was composed of elements protected by the First Amendment: speech, assembly, and petition. The Court also paid particular attention to the end goal of the boycotters.
In that case, Justice John Paul Stevens compared the NAACP boycott campaign with the railroad association’s public relations campaign in Noerr and concluded that the boycott was entitled to even greater protection.
I can see the similarity to Claiborne and the differences since in the case of Claiborne:
* there was a specific petition (of which I'm not aware in the case of the Israel boycott, but may exist)
* the boycott's target was a domestic entity as opposed to a foreign nation, which seems to go around traditional prohibitions against individuals conducting foreign policy
BOYCOTTS involve withdrawing support from Israel's apartheid regime, complicit Israeli sporting, cultural and academic institutions, and from all Israeli and international companies engaged in violations of Palestinian human rights.
Also, it's important to mention that the academic boycott if Israeli institutions is an important component of the BDS movement. A general boycott is necessary because there is a moral imperative to end the occupation and only outside pressure, like the pressure that was exerted on the apartheid regime in South Africa, can perhaps achieve this.
Why academia? Because Israeli academia is also a mouthpiece of the establishment and is used to enable Israel to present itself abroad as "the only democracy in the Middle East."
> It is much more then I implied.
Is this an inverse form of motte and bailey argumentation? Are there any institutions associated with Israel that BDS would not cover? How can a disinterested person distinguish between a moral imperative based boycott and run of the mill anti-semitism (Baptist and Bootlegger problem)? Would a constitutional test for the Texas law fail if the petitioner's motivation were the latter or does it not make a difference?
After all, BDS campaigns may seem rather silly.
Would it possibly matter if you stop buying Sabre Hummus?
But these campaigns can be effective (for their proponents). They make US citizens aware of the conditions they would not otherwise be aware of.
Although A & R’s boycott has not materially affected any of its business decisions through the present, A&R would refuse to buy an Israeli-sourced product were the opportunity to otherwise arise. Moreover, even if A & R was not boycotting Israel, it would refuse to certify that it would not boycott Israel for the duration of the renewal contract because, by signing, A & R would be compelled to speak in furtherance of a foreign government’s interests. But for the renewal contract’s certification requirement, based on the Anti-BDS Law, A&R is ready, willing, and able to enter into the contract and perform the agreed-upon engineering services for the City.
Won't you think of the MBAs!
Israel has a lot of critics that are plainly against its existence, but that does not justify banning any dissent.
> America to miss out on giving money to Israel to give back to America
America[n tax payers] to miss out on giving money [as charitable aid] to [the apartheid regime controlling] Israel to [spend it at] America[n weapons manufacturers].
And in that case it becomes clear why directly from taxpayers to weapons manufacturers is not going to fly: it's too obvious and does not put the weapons where they can be (ab)used!
What/where is the "particular legal clause? This article veers from there into a personal biography. Is it part of his contract, a local bylaw? What's the legality or legal history of such actions?
Sigh. So much journalism is just tweet + fluff.
For example a similar law in a different state was found unconstitutional by a Circuit Court:
> The US District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas heard the case involving Act 710, a statute that forbids state parties from establishing contractual agreements with companies that boycott Israel.
> The Court ultimately concludes that supporting boycotts of Israel is protected under the Constitution and that Act 710 violates First Amendment rights.
https://jolt.law.harvard.edu/digest/eighth-circuit-state-law...
But these kind of laws are controversial and different courts have come to other conclusions.
It's a long article, but it's mostly an article about the person. Almost no information about the actual issue at hand. Where is the journalistic curiosity. How does the clause work? How many contracts is it in? Are there other boilerplate clauses that work like this? What about other states? What about other lawsuits. I assume a lone Houston businessman isn't the only affected party taking legal action.
It's terrible that reading articles on a topic doesn't actually inform you about it.
There has been a lot of legal analysis about this topic too. Most believe that these anti-boycott laws are unconstitutional and will (eventually) be struck down by the Supreme Court. But it may take years or decades before a final decision is made.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/07/four-ti...
This alleged contract clause seems a lot like the sorts of nebulous "we reserve the right to back out without penalty if you do something not befitting our brand image" clauses you get when providing services for prestigious institutions but with a more government style legalese applied to it. Basically Houston doesn't want to potentially deal with the blow-back of a contractor is taking a particular stance on a particular political issue. It would be unsurprising if cities like Boston have similar clauses barring contractors from expressing strong anti-lgbtq or anti public employee union political sentiments. At the end of the day none of this really matters. The city will a ways terminate a relationship with a contractor if they cause political problems. The contract clause just makes the inevitable lawsuit slightly more uphill. Houston probably doesn't really care for the state's law on this issue so odds are they will likely never try and enforce these specific terms anyway.
https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/85R/billtext/html/HB00089I...
The realpolitik move here is for Hassouna to include the clause so the bureaucrat evaluating his submission can check the box without sticking their neck out and then do what he damn well pleases. The state isn't gonna take him to court for the same reason the states you cheer-lead for only ever use their gun laws to secure better plea deals and never actually prosecute them in court.
It's quite clear that's not the case.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws#Constitutional_c...
What part of "the Court held that "content based laws...are presumptive unconstitutional" was unclear?
That's what caused Texas to turn around and revise the law saying it needs to be in contract boilerplate. And every city rolls their eyes and says "ok, whatever mom" and implements it. What do you think the odds that Houston a) wants to enforce the terms b) will actually decide to try and enforce the terms are.
Even unenforced laws can have a chilling effect, as well.
Chilling is the whole point of this law. He's presumably not an idiot and he figured that out as soon as he knew about the change. If he thought suing the state would actually jeopardize his income (suing the state creates a massive conflict of interest his government clients could easily use to justify cutting ties) he almost certainly wouldn't be doing it. In reality he knows how the people he does business with lean and knows they won't care or will think well of his lawsuit.
When it comes to businesses, the US government reserves the right to institute international boycotts. Companies may not, generally speaking, boycott a country (or people from that country, etc) unless that country (or person) is being boycotted by the US.
There are mandatory reporting requirements that surround this. If you work in finance and you have not received training on this topic...
For more info: The Office of Antiboycott Compliance -- https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/enforcement/oac. From their intro:
"The Office of Antiboycott Compliance (OAC) within BIS is charged with administering and enforcing the Anti-Boycott Act of 2018, Part II of the Export Control Reform Act of 2018 (ECRA), and the antiboycott provisions set forth in Part 760 of the Export Administration Regulations, 15 CFR parts 730-774 (EAR). These authorities discourage, and in some circumstances, prohibit U.S. companies from taking certain actions in furtherance or support of a boycott maintained by a foreign country against a country friendly to the United States (unsanctioned foreign boycott). U.S. companies must report to OAC their receipt of certain boycott-related requests for information designed to verify compliance with an unsanctioned foreign boycott. Prohibited activities include, inter alia, agreements by U.S. companies to refuse to do business with a boycotted country or with blacklisted persons for boycott-related reasons, furnishing information about any person’s business relationships with a boycotted country or with blacklisted persons, and implementation (by U.S. banking entities) of letters of credit that include prohibited boycott-related terms or conditions."
...so this law makes sense.
You cannot negotiate with 100,000 small US businesses - but now the US can use this lever of control to help force Israel or other governments to change.
This also applies to China, Myanmar, South Africa, etc...
That is far from clear and has not been settled by the SC. There is a federal amendment from 1977 to the Export Administration Act (EEA) that forbade American companies from participating in the boycott against Israel that the Arab League organized. However, since then the SC decided in favor of African American organizations that in the 1960's had organized boycotts against racist white shopkeepers. The SC ruled that political boycotts was protected free speech and participating in them a constitutional right.
Another counter-argument is that the boycott against Israel is not maintained by a "foreign country" but by the BDS movement and other grassroots organizations around the world. Furthermore, the boycott targets non-Israel companies doing business in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories just as much as it targets Israeli companies. Thus, the EEA may not be applicable at all.
In either case, the EEA doesn't entail an obligation of contractors to promise not to boycott certain countries to be awarded government contracts, which is what this (and other similar state laws) is all about.
This would seem to be referring to boycotts instituted by nation states against other nation states that are friendly to the United States. It doesn’t seem applicable to a discussion about BDS.
How would a boycott destroy one of the most powerful military forces on earth?
BDS isn't trying to destroy Israel. It's only attempting to bring attention to the government's inhuman treatment of Palestinians.
Human Rights watch calls the situation in the OT "apartheid" (note the little ' A'). https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/isra...
B'Tselem Israeli Human RIghts group: https://www.btselem.org/topic/apartheid
Not all criticism of the Israeli government is antisemitism.
for the record though, I don't care much about neither the US's culture wars nor for the attempts of Israel to travel two thousand years in the past. Both look like extremely dumb ideas but taking sides means only increasing the idiocy at hand.
It was also determined long ago that all ethnostates are stupid and dangerous and should not exist.
Fpr that matter, it was determined long ago that I should be king of the world.
It's just a question of whose determinations you happen to decide to accept...
> Considering Jews' unique history of persecution it would be pretty crazy to argue they are not a people, so they are not like white South Africans.
Wait, Jews are "a people" and Boers aren't? How did that happen?
The Boers are "a people" by any reasonably principled definition, and nonetheless South African apartheid was unacceptable. Representing "a people" does not give you a license to treat other people like shit.
... and you say "a people" like that's a good thing. In fact, the concept of "peoples" (nations, whatever you want to call them) is dangerous and destructive, and the (unfortunately natural and built in) human tendency to form attachments to arbitrary abstract groups is one of the top contenders for what's going to destroy the whole goddamned species.
> Creating "one democratic state" will rob both the Jews and the Palestinians of their right for self determination.
Only individual human beings have rights, not "peoples". Especially self determination.
The idea of group "self determination" is self-evidently moronic. To have self determination, you have to have a reasonably unified will and probably a reasonably unified mind. "Peoples" have neither.
> It will also in all likelihood create chaos,
Probably true. There is no good answer at this point. Things were already bad, and the foolish decision to create Israel really locked in the doom.
It would have spared millions of innocent deaths if Jews had a country during WW2. So maybe it's not always that stupid. And in fact, taking a whiff at the current state of things for Jews in the diaspora, I still think Jews should have a place of their own. I am not forecasting another holocaust, hell no, but it sure becomes harder to be openly Jewish in the West.
The whole Nazi project was precisely to create an ethnostate. The enthnicity they had in mind didn't have much of a historical existence, true, and neither did the genetic group they imagined to make it up. But what defines an ethnicity? They had a founding myth, and they definitely managed to generate some real "Aryan" self-identification in people's minds. What does any ethnicity, including Jews, have besides founding myths and shared self-identification? It seems to me that the Nazis either had as valid a "people" to work with as any other, or at least were well on the way to creating one.
And yet somehow I really can't work up any sympathy at all for the Nazi's "purification" project, or for the "Aryan people".
Speaking of "states for peoples", a whole lot of those innocent deaths were aided by other states' unwillingness to admit Jews who were trying to get away from the Nazis. It seems they also wanted to keep their countries pure for their own "peoples". Maybe if they'd been less concerned about having states "for their peoples", they'd have been more willing to take in the actual individual human beings who were about to be slaughtered.
For that matter, even after the war, creating Israel let the winners feel a bit better about themselves while still not, you know, letting too many Jews in. I don't know if not having to "take" Jews was a major motivation, but I've heard that some of their leaders at least thought about that.
Oh, and by the way, while the Nazis definitely had a special hardon for Jews, they killed a shit-ton of non-Jews, too. If making sure people have their own country is the method we're using to save people when a genocidal psychotic system takes over the place they're living, then it seems like maybe we have to create some more countries.
Should the Roma get a country? They're definitely a "people", and they were targeted on the basis of it. Should there be a gay country? OK, not a "people", but still a targeted group that's at very serious risk in a bunch of countries today, if that's the criterion you're using.
Or, better yet, why not just take the view that Nazis, or equivalent, don't get to run any countries? And why not put a big fence around that possibility by saying that countries shouldn't be built on ethnicity at all? Would it be so awful to have a system of administrative districts without "national identity"?
Maybe there's no way to get there. I fully understand that that's now how people work.
But I don't like the idea that the way to protect against ethnic violence is to feed and further legitimize the "this for our people only" tendency, to do things that generate stronger ethnic divisions, or to make your personal safety contingent on you being able to find a state that happens to consider you one of "its people".
Finally and most importantly Jews aren't responsible for your personal shortcomings.
Israel is in some important ways analogous to what the Nazis were trying to create. It is amazingly clueless for you to offer the Nazis as an example of why Israel should be around, when in fact they are an example of exactly why Israel should not be around.
The creation of Israel fed into and sustains exactly the phenomenon that you claim it's there to protect against. Having states for "peoples" is part of the problem. People identifying with either real or imaginary "heritages" or "cultures" or "races" or "tribes" or whatever is a bad thing. Building governments around it is a worse thing. That includes Israel. And you compound that when you suggest that the way to protect somebody from violence is to have a state that's in the business of protecting that individual's "people".
And, no, for the slower-minded readers, I am not claiming that anything Israel has actually done is the same as what the Nazis did.
You sound borderline anti semitic saying stuff like that. You have no idea how obtuse that is.
In fact, I would have a hard time finding one Jewish friend who was even mildly Zionist.
--Vladimir Jabotinsky, The Iron Wall, (We and the Arabs) (1923)
While some aspects of Zionism were indeed troubling in today's standards, when push came to shove the Zionist leadership accepted partition to two states (in 1947).
How does quoting Jabotinsky from a century ago help us in solving this conflict? Unless your only point is that current Israel should be dismanteld.
"I am for compulsory transfer; I do not see anything immoral in it." --David Ben-Gurion to the Jewish Agency Executive, June 1938
''The cultivated land is probably 1 million dunam. According to international law, we cannot sell anything, so maybe we should buy from those Arabs who do not want to come back.... All we need is 400 tractors, each tractor can cultivate 3000 dunam - cultivating not just for the purpose of procuring food but in order to prevent anyone from returning to their lands. Land of lesser quality should be sold to private or public sectors....At least, let us say that this confiscation is an exchange for the property the Jews from the Arab world lost when they immigrated to Palestine." --Bechor Shitrit, head of the settlement department of the Jewish National Fund, Ben-Gurion's Diary, 18 August 1948.
Here’s the Texas info, for example:
Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed HB89, an act relating to state contracts with and investments in companies that boycott Israel, on May 2, 2017. The bill prohibits the State of Texas from contracting or entering into business with companies or entities involved in the BDS movement against Israel. The law ensures that public funds will not go to companies that participate in BDS.
In 2019, Texas started to divest $72 million worth of stock in the Norwegian financial services firm DNB ASA. Two state pension funds – the Employees Retirement System of Texas and Texas Permanent School Fund — own $68 million and $4 million, respectively, in stock in the company. This is the first action taken under the anti-boycott legislation.
In April 2019, a U.S. District Judge ruled in favor of Bahia Amawi, a former speech pathologist who sued the state over the law after she was fired from her job for supporting BDS. The court found “the statute to be a viewpoint-based restriction intended not to combat discrimination on the basis of national origin, but to silence speech with which Texas disagrees.”
In response, the legislature rewrote the language limiting the application of the law to companies with more than 10 full-time employees and contracts of more than $100,000 with the state. The governor signed the bill.
Notice, though, the stark difference between the legality of Texas’s own divestment and the firing of a Texas employee for an opinion. Plenty of states boycotting plenty of things; that’s normal. California bans official travel to 18 different US states (with limited exceptions to pursue taxes, and the like) over their lgbt-related laws, and CalPERS divests from oil and tobacco and the like.
Ironically, on almost every other issue, it should be decided at the state level, and it's the federal government that is unconstitutionally meddling,
I am afraid of large powerful private companies - now and even more in future. They can fire you, reject providing services that are essential to function in a modern society - if your position on some topics is different from theirs. Now you cannot refer to the freedom of opinion - it is a private entity and they are free to decide whether they want to cancel or fire you.
The mechanism here appears to be (the article itself is light on facts) a contract, same as would be with a private entity. The entity on the other end of the contract could be private, public or mixed. The rule/clause may originate in a contract between this entity and a 3rd party, or the entity's interpretation/implementation of a regulatory framework.
In regulated industries, the last version is ubiquitous. A bank, casino or whatnot will have a "compliance" function. There will be "regulatory/compliance" requirements, rules and clauses. It's never clear whether these are government rules, private policies, etc.
We have a lot of examples in history when the institutions that are designed to be moral guides bend their principles to the ruling ideology: Catholic Church in Nazi Germany, Orthodox Church in Soviet & Putin Russia.
I think large companies tend to eagerly adopt any moral principles that bring them more customer, attracts more employees, helps to get government contracts, and avoid lawsuits.
A vaccine mandate is a non-starter only in the current poisonous US political environment. There is historical precedent for vaccine mandates in the US: polio. What else are reasonably careful policy makers to do if a very vocal minority has the ability to block any progress?
When it comes to utilities, I absolutely agree. But not a specific email provider or social media site or video site, etc.
Also my friend went to a university where the official communication for course-work happened through Facebook. I'm not sure how someone without access to Facebook would be able to participate in that program.
That's absurd and a failure on the university's part. What country was this in.
Well this is moving the goal-posts isn't it? The comment I responded to said that the effect of being denied access to a certain social media platform is overstated. I would argue for media professionals it's basically a requirement.
> That's absurd and a failure on the university's part. What country was this in.
This was a masters program in Germany
Witholding access to course materials, unless a student enters a contract/relationship with a third-party (Facebook or otherwise), is coersion. I would certainly kick up a fuss: start politely with those running the course (who probably didn't give it much thought); go up the chain as necessary.
At each step, make sure the focus remains on the coersion: the University is retroactively adding terms (e.g. whatever is in Facebook's policies) to the contracts agreed during enrollment. It is threatening to impose penalties (e.g. lost marks) on those who don't accept such unilateral changes.
Do not allow the issue to get derailed into tangential concerns, especially money (e.g. price of the service, or provision of equipment/connections, etc.). Those things could be solved by signing a cheque; but would not address the real problem. If concrete reasons is really needed, there are a bunch to choose from that aren't easily solved (and are not under the University's control): for Facebook/Meta there are a whole bunch, from real name requirements, privacy concerns, non-consentual psychology experiments, etc. Personally I would just say I find the company, their products and their business practices unethical.
(I had a similar experience when my Physics course tried to make me use Microsoft Excel)
If I find myself agreeing with the average Redditor or Twitter user (god-forbid a blue check!) it’s usually a sign that something is missing from my thought process and I should shake things up a little.
The only way corporations will take control of our society is if we let them. I am continually amazed by how much people let corporations and attorneys bully them. There is this pervasive attitude that they control everything and it is dangerous to fight back. If that attitude continues to prevail, then yes - that is when we will have serious problems.
I am not sure you have an accessibility case regarding a facebook group. It is accessible for individuals with disabilities, via the use of electronic aides such as screen readers. Accessibility does not mean, "I get whatever I want whenever I want." It means, "I can access this without my disability impeding that."
Not having facebook is not a disability.
I'm very, very confused by what you're saying.
But that is missing the forest for the trees - the specifics of this anecdote are one small point. Standing up for yourself is the bigger point. I could be 100% wrong about the accessibility in schools, but that doesn't change my larger wish - that we would all stand up and push back when we see problems... not just dismissively say, "well, we'd never win that fight, so don't even try."
I don't see a more accessible option. Facebook is as close to ubiquitous and universal as you can get, really. If someone cannot, not won't as the original poster said, but simply cannot access facebook, what other option is there? That means they have no smartphone, or internet access, at all. Therefore, there are no electronic options that exist. Physical paper mailers home? If they cannot afford a smartphone, what are the chances they have a permanent residence? Or, what for the parents who have no permanent residence. So that's not a solution. Next option - in person group meetings? Work, kids, health, transportation, any number of things exist that could be a barrier there. So what's the solution? That's not a flippant question, that's a real question. I don't see it.
Again, accessibility should be about ensuring everyone has the opportunity to access the goods and services in an equivalent way. Not about ensuring everyone gets to access the goods and services in the specific way they want to.
This all started with OP originally talking about not wanting a facebook. Not to sound too hateful, but part of living in society is understanding that certain personal concessions will have to be made. Like it or lump it, decisions have consequences.
Maybe I've gone too far off the path, but I think it's all related.
E-mail for instance: You need an E-mail account to sign up for Facebook, so that means E-mail's userbase is at least a superset of Facebook's. Since you need Internet for E-mail, then the user-base for a normal, Internet web site should be a superset of E-mail users. Keep looking for supersets until the effort spent reaching the next one doesn't make sense anymore.
You could try pushing back with a First Amendment complaint. Say you have a sincere and deeply held belief that using Facebook is wrong, and that forcing you to use it violates your First Amendment rights. The Supreme Court has held that beliefs do not need to be strictly religious in order to be protected. It's the same route anti-vaxxers take.
I still wouldn't hold my breath. You might win, but your children will already be in college by the time it's all sorted.
If I was forced to change my email address, I might not be able to recover some accounts. Some don't support changing username (which is my email). I don't want to count the number of websites I'd need to update.
A lot of people who sell crafts and bespoke items will probably rely on access to various marketplaces and payment processors; and arguably the social media platforms could be considered essential for marketing. Drivers and people working delivery gigs would rely on their own platforms like Uber or Deliveroo, etc.
For personal use, I would be inclined to agree with you; many of the platforms are more of a nuisance than anything else.
> You're reflexively labeled anti-Semitic and often castigated for it.
So? Freedom of speech is not freedom from criticism or reproach.
I think this is exactly what happens.
They have apartheid in the lawbooks, but I think no US MSM channel goes as far to dare to say this... They dare say it about Arab countries (maltreatment of migrant workers). They've said it about South-Africa.
Boycotting Jewish companies (for being owned by Jewish people) is antisemitic, but the goal of BDS is boycotting Israeli companies over accusations against the Israeli government the same way e.g. the US sanctions Iranian companies over accusations against the Iranian government.
Even if the majority of them were, the defining issue for BDS itself is not doing business with Israeli entities. Not doing business is not armed conflict. For you to have a point, they would have to somehow using the boycott itself to aid in shooting up the place. That doesn't even pass the laugh test.
Why should the government be able to punish individuals who voice such opinions, excepting diplomatic or national security roles?
Do the recent reports on Israeli treatment of Palestinians go beyond criticism?
https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/isra...
What about B'Tselem's report? Is that beyond criticism?
This is clearly not everyone in the US, but it's enough that if you're a business or public figure who makes noise about it, you'll be branded anti-Semetic by a particular "news-as-hatred" cable network and certain members of Congress.
His political opinion (and you can agree or disagree with it) is to boycott Israeli institutions as part of an international Boycott Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign because he disapproves of the treatment of Palestinian people living in the Occupied Territories. You can read about how Palestinians are treated in a recent Human Rights Watch report (just google, "Human Rights Watch Israel apartheid") and decide for yourself.
This seems to violate the First Amendment rights to free speech and this is what the lower courts have held. So while the right to "free speech" is not absolute (one can't yell "fire" in a crowded theater), you are free to hold (and talk about) any political views. And a state (or federal) entity cannot punish you for your thoughts and speech (outside of work, of course).
The reason this is important is that boycotts (and talking about and organizing them) have been a powerful tool for non-violent political action and have been used throughout the world since their origin in 1880's Ireland.
But why is this important now? If a state or federal agency can require employees to hold certain political views, they can create all sorts of requirements (via laws) for not only employment, but other benefits and or services they provide. Hope this helps.
They have no business doing that and this is absolutely ridiculous.
If I were a Texan, and I found out that my state government is potentially over-paying contractors based on a completely irrelevant criteria to the work, I would not be pleased.
You can "say" this all you want, but in fact states do not have this right: their criteria can't violate individual Constitutional rights.
If their criteria said "whites only" or "you can't support gay martiage" the issue would be the same: there is nothing special at all about which specific freedom the criteria violates.
I mean if it's relevant fine: like if the project is to provide security to Israeli diplomats by all means make this a hiring consideration, but for a contractor in Texas?
This is why the KKK gets to adopt highways. https://www.cnn.com/2016/07/05/us/georgia-kkk-adopt-a-highwa...
Your logic is deeply flawed.
I personally found the article very interesting, but I’m not sure it belongs here on HN.
Nerds finding and discussing something intellectually interesting is literally the whole point of HN.
The jew friends I have are way more balanced and critical of Israel human right abuses than the christians, who seems to feel that criticizing Israel is the same as denying its right to exist.
I'm just pointing out that the Supreme Court is a ridiculous example of this, as they are arguably the most underrepresented group there.
Amy Coney Barrett may be Catholic, but she was heavily favored by evangelicals, with specific interest in overturning Roe v. Wade.
But it's not like Amy Coney Barrett is barely Catholic. She's been heavily involved in the church her whole life, and her career has been centered around a deeply Catholic university. She only represents Evangelicals in situations where their belief overlaps with those of the Catholic church.
Barrett is both deeply Catholic and part of an organization (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_of_Praise) that features aspects typically more in line with American evangelical Protestantism. The Catholic Church can be a surprisingly diverse group theologically; American bishops are frequently feuding with the Pope over issues like the death penalty and abortion.
American evangelicals didn't get in line behind Barrett and Kavanaugh on account of their Catholicism.
But I still tend to believe that if Evangelical Protestants were really the ones controlling who is nominated and confirmed to the supreme court more than anyone else, we'd see at least a single Evangelical Protestant on it.
Imagine if rather than gaining its independence from the UK, the USA instead of becoming its own independent country, was still called the United States of America, but over time, in practice it had become totally servile, dependent on, psychologically submissive and subjugated to the British aristocracy that rules the UK and Americans worshipped them as demigods.
There are further policies planned in a similar vein.
This is expected to change shortly, due to those very same "three appointees to the Supreme Court".
The assertion that "evangelicals have no power" in the US is simply silly.
I am talking about the culture, the people at large. I can't see no other segment of civil society more vocal and passionate about Israels defense than some groups of evangelical christians, and this Texas law is just an example of that.
And yet both conservatives and liberals attack China and other alleged culprits for being censorious and not being "free" . This muzzling of alternative voices is not even specific to the US. A British professor was canceled/fired from Bristol University for remarks deemed critical of Israel:
I don't like the ban but the argument is silly.
EDIT: I'm being rate limited on replies for some reason, I'd like to respond to some comments on here but I cannot. Mayhaps I will try again in a few hours.
You do have a First Amendment right to not having your freedom of speech abridged by the government. Since 1925, that restriction has been incorporated, i.e. it applies to states like Texas. Government contracts, like laws, are restricted by the Constitution.
They go against the market to bend over backwards for certain other groups of people: https://www.sba.gov/business-guide/grow-your-business/become...
This is not really bending over backwards, but they do need you to spend additional resources on other shit as well: https://www.employer.gov/EmploymentIssues/Federal-contractor...
Don't be surprised to find out that the federal government doesn't believe in the free market.
The term you're looking for is the "unconstitutional conditions doctrine" [1]. It's not black and white. But it will be difficult for Texas to argue that U.S. foreign policy vis-à-vis Israel is germane to soil volatility in the Gulf of Mexico.
[1] https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar...
If a person is aware that he/she is waiving their rights, and is not some accidental waiver, the government is not being deceptive or coercive, the person is free to reject the offer from the government without sanction, and the person waiving their right has the capacity to understand that they are doing - then there is no (generally) constitutional violation.
In the context of employment or government contracts, the government does not guarantee employment to every person. The fact that a potential employee (for example) may be impoverished and desperate for a paying job does not make the government’s conditions for the job coercive, unless the government specifically created the person’s unemployment.
Yes, it is. The government refusing to do business with you solely because of First Amendment-protected speech would be a clear interference with that right.
https://www.texastribune.org/2019/05/09/Texas-anti-boycott-i...
This is not unprecedented among states in the U.S. Many states have banned government work and travel to other states and countries due to policy issues.
https://apnews.com/article/california-florida-lifestyle-trav...
Not only will the US government refuse to do business with you, they'll charge you with a crime.
What next? How about a MAGA state saying "You have to acknowledge that Trump won the 2020 elections to work with us"?
Wow, the comments in here are really opening my eyes to what HN actually is instead of what I thought it was.
You’ll never find a place that won’t have these sort of divides unless you specifically go to a site for only your political views.
You're not constrained by the First Amendment. Texas is.
The state is not allowed to discriminate based on arbitrary attributes of that contractor.
Discrimination against blacks is illegal in the context of denying individuals things like employment, access to housing and medical care, shopping, etc. You have to show that the individual or business has specifically taken action in some way to deny one or more individuals their rights.
In fact, the same rules apply to discrimination based on religion, or national origin or background. So anyone who has discriminated against someone who is Jewish or from Israel is subject to similar liability.
But nowhere in any of these laws does it say that a business has to promise to never protest or disagree with the country that one of those groups come from. I have to hire people from France if they’re qualified, but I’m also allowed to protest the French government’s policies on basically anything.
If the law from this article was applied to, say, Saudi Arabia or Mexico, would we be comfortable supporting it?
Keep this in mind.
> but I’m also allowed to protest the French government’s policies on basically anything.
So are you allowed to protest the French government by boycotting French companies? Ie. not doing business with French people? The first half of your sentence is directly at odds with the second. How do you actually boycott France if not by applying the boycott to it's people?
The Israeli boycott isn't simply saying you don't agree with their government, it's actively boycotting companies run by Israeli Jews and not hiring Israeli Jews.
That's simply not true. The Texas law does not say anything about boycotts against Jews. And BDS is modeled after the successful Apartheid boycotts, which were boycotts of South Africa, not boycotts of companies run by White South Africans.
I find BDS problematic, but saying you can’t boycott a group of businesses for political reasons is anathema to the spirit of free speech and protest. For the same reason,’it is perfectly fine to boycott Saudi Arabian businesses for their national political policies, even though in practice that means not doing business with Saudi Muslims.
Conflating the behavior of "Jews" with the behavior of the "State of Israel" is racist.
You just did that. He didnt. Neither did BDS.
> Virtually all Israeli companies are complicit to some degree in Israel’s system of occupation and apartheid.
From https://bdsmovement.net/get-involved/what-to-boycott
Last dropdown link at the bottom of the page.
It's clear that BDS is the precipitating cause of this law, and so it's reasonable to look at BDS as the way that this was put into place, but the law itself doesn't have anything to do with BDS, and so it's not relevant to talk about BDS in the context of its effects on people today.
We both know that calling a boycott of "nearly every American" company an "attack on the white race" would be a racist wolf whistle, and not a particularly subtle one.
Yours is no different.
Israeli != Jew.
There's plenty of Muslim, Christian and secular Israelis. Stop conflating religion and nationality.
Please, people are way more sympathetic towards Taiwan than to Israel or Jews in general. The US government basically ensure's Taiwan's safety and independence, if it were up to half the people in the US, Israel would cease to exist (and there's no need to say what would happen to the Jews who currently live there, no matter what you believe about their right to be there).
Israel's setup is quite similar.
> if it were up to half the people in the US, Israel would cease to exist
https://today.yougov.com/topics/international/articles-repor...
"Most Americans believe helping to protect Israel should be an important goal of American policy toward the Middle East. On this, Democrats (59%), Republicans (64%), and Independents (79%) agree. However, the latest Economist/YouGov poll underscores the differences in opinions about Israel between Republicans and Democrats."
That's a pretty far cry from what you're asserting.
If you can't see that before spewing out your hot take we can't help you
From: https://www.aclu.org/letter/aclu-letter-opposing-s-1-combati...
If you prefer, the "Jews for Peace" organization probably employ at least one Jew.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.
You cannot discriminate against an Israeli on the basis of either. You can discriminate against Israel as a state.
> A part of the Immigration and Nationality Act, found at 8 U.S.C. section 1324b, prohibits employers from discriminating against individuals based on their citizenship or immigration status, or their national origin, during the hiring, firing, recruiting, Form I-9, or E-Verify processes.
> Employers cannot discriminate against individuals when hiring, firing, or recruiting based on the individual’s place of birth, country of origin, ancestry, native language, accent, or because they are perceived as looking or sounding “foreign.”
> Employers cannot discriminate against individuals when hiring, firing, or recruiting because the individuals are or are not U.S. citizens, or because of their immigration status or type of employment authorization. U.S. citizens, noncitizen nationals, asylees, refugees, and recent permanent residents are protected from this type of discrimination.
There are exceptions if you're, say, working on ICBMs.